SRA seeks more time to ship add’l sugar export quota to US

The Sugar Regulatory Administration ( SRA) will ask the United States for an extension for the shipment of the additional export allocation of 14,199 metric tons of (MT) raw cane sugar due for September as the current cropping season is already drawing to a close, SRA administrator Ma. Regina Martin said yesterday.

In an interview on the sidelines of the Responsible Business Forum on Food and Agriculture held in Makati, Martin said the SRA has received official notice of the reallocation from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) last week.

The US has given the Philippines an additional sugar allocation of more than 14,199 metric tons on top of the 138,000 MT of the regular US sugar uota for crop year 2013-2014.

The additional export volume given to the Philippine is part of the 99, 290 MT reallocated by the US from countries that could not fill their export commitments.

Aside from the Philippines, 24 other countries received additional sugar allocations.

“We have confirmed with the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) that there was a reallocation,” said Martin. “But it will be for this crop year and so I will have to make a re uest to the US if there can be an extension or not have a deadline.”

She said that to date, the Philippines has already shipped more than 120,000 metric tons to the US out of its regular uota for the current crop year which ends in August.

“So if we will be allowed, we can ship the volume by the end of the year or early next year along with the regular uota,” said Martin.

A month into the closing of the sugar crop year, some 2.44 million MT of sugar had already been produced, a flat growth from 2.45 million MT produced in the previous crop year.

This, however, was higher than the revised production estimate of 2.35 million MT for this year in consideration of the damage inflicted by Typhoon Yolanda on five percent of the country’s total sugar cane cultivation area of 420,000 hectares.

“Sugarcane being a resilient crop, it survived and we surpassed out production estimate,” said Martin.